All excerpts taken from Instant Zen, Cleary.
Foyan said
Once you came to age of reason, then you listened to discriminatory thinking, and from that time on have suffered a split between the primal and the temporal. (33-34)
(32, "Learning Zen")
You must be attuned twenty-four hours a day before you attain realization.
Always attuned, what is not understood?
Have you not read how Lingyun suddenly tuned in to this reality on seeing peach blossoms, how Xiangyan set his mind at rest on hearing the sound of bamboo being hit?
An ancient said, “If you are not in tune with this reality, then the whole earth deceives you, the environment fools you.”
The reason for all the mundane conditions abundantly present is just that this reality has not been clarified. I urge you for now to first detach from gross mental objects. Twenty-four hours a day you... think all sorts of various thoughts, like the flame of a candle burning unceasingly.
Blow it out, or let it run its course.
When are you the fool?
Just detach from gross mental objects, and whatever subtle ones there are will naturally clear out, and eventually you will come to understand spontaneously; you don’t need to seek. [...]
This is why the ineffable message of Zen is to be understood on one's own. I have no Zen for you to study, no Doctrine for you to discuss. I just want you to tune in on your own.
Nothing is unclear.
The only essential thing in learning Zen is to forget mental objects and stop rumination. This is the message of Zen since time immemorial. Did not one of the Patriarchs say, “Freedom from thoughts is the source, freedom from appearances is the substance”?
If you just shout and clap, when will you ever be done?
He says elsewhere that conventions come from conceptual thought. He questions what use could be made of them.
He says practical application of Zen is detachment from thought.
He does not say it is extinguishing thoughts, or suppression.
"...live in the land of thought, yet untouched by thought..."
"...no thinker or thought when you think..."
"...conceptual thought [...] constructs signals."
But also: "you make thinking into one extreme and nonthinking into another extreme..." and "Professional monks say, 'Thinking will not do; not thinking will not do either'..."
So what's going on?
(31, "In Tune")
Don’t say what is speaking right now is It; that’s not quite right. As soon as there is an affirmation, then there is a denial. That is the reason why it is said, that no verbal expressions correspond to this reality.
When you deny, what is affirmed?
What you must do is live in harmony with it. This matter is not in another; but are you in tune with it? And if you are in tune, in tune with whom?
If you say you are in tune with the ancients, the ancients are gone. If you say you are in tune with a teacher, a teacher has no connection with you.
This is why the sages compassionately told us to tune into the source of our own minds. Now tell me, what is the source of mind, to which one tunes in on one's own?
If you mindfully try to tune into mind, you will definitely be unable to tune in. You have to tune in with mindless mind.
What is this mindless mind?
(61, 62, "Keep Evolving")
If you have just now understood, where is that which you couldn’t understand before? If you can’t understand now, when will you understand?
[...]
[Linji] said, “Your eyes radiate a light that shines through the mountains and rivers.”
[...]
[Linji said], “There is a true person of no rank in the mass of naked flesh, always going out and coming in through the doors of your senses; those who have not yet witnessed it, look!”
When a student came forward and asked what the true person of no rank is, Linji got out of his chair, grabbed the student, and said, “Speak! Speak!”
When the student hesitated, trying to think up something to say, Linji pushed him away and said, “What a dry turd the true person of no rank is!” Then Linji went back to his quarters.
[...]
Xuefeng called on Touzi and asked, “Is there anyone to call on here?”
Touzi threw down his hoe. Xuefeng said, “Then I’ll dig right where I am.” Touzi said, “Dullard!” Even though he said he would dig right where he was, he was still called a dullard.
Dullards, fools, wet or dry turds; have you been down to the sewers, wandering mindlessly?
Submitted December 06, 2018 at 06:03AM by i-dont-no https://ift.tt/2rkYZGK
No comments:
Post a Comment